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Timeless Ideas

Albert Einstein in the opening of Apple’s Think Different film— Apple / TBWA\Chiat\Day

Think Different

Brand:
Apple
Agency:
TBWA\Chiat\Day
1997Integrated campaignFilm, print and outdoor campaign

Timeless principle

When a brand needs to recover its meaning, the people it chooses to honor can define the worldview it wants audiences to join.

The idea

Reintroduce Apple by placing its mark beside people whose imagination changed culture, making the company’s chosen heroes its clearest product statement.

Why it works

The campaign withholds the computer and lets cultural affiliation carry the sale. In print and outdoor, a stark black-and-white portrait, a tiny rainbow Apple and two words create a complete positioning system; the identity of each subject supplies a new proof of the same belief. The film turns those portraits into a collective manifesto, while the posters let individual figures become public emblems. Because the visual grammar barely changes, the series can expand across Muhammad Ali, Maria Callas, Jim Henson and others without weakening recognition. Apple makes its taste in people stand in for its taste in products.

Tags

Gallery

  • Apple — Think Different: Muhammad Ali
  • Think Different outdoor billboard: Muhammad Ali
  • Think Different outdoor billboard: Albert Einstein
  • Think Different outdoor billboard: Mahatma Gandhi
  • Think Different wall: Martha Graham
  • Think Different identity slate
  • Think Different wall: Pablo Picasso
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